RDC: MONUC Departure Will Lead to Crisis

By on May 12, 2010
“We still have a problem of security because we don’t have an army. Our army is acting like rebels, like militias.  So, if MONUC forces leave Congo now it means that we drive the country into a new crisis… MONUC helps to secure the local population and protecting civilians”; a leading member of rebel groups said. He added Congo will become a failed state if the U.N. peacekeepers leave.

There are reasons we think so, because “We gave all our combatants to the government in January 2009 for them to be integrated into the regular army.  But, unfortunately, the government forces are just leaving the army and they go to the bush to stay there because they are not well treated.  People that are fighting against the government are the former soldiers that left the army because they were not paid”.
But Congo’s information minister, recently said President Joseph Kabila’s government is forming a competent national army to take over after the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission withdraws next year.
“We are living under an exceptional period for 11 years now.  We think that enough is enough, and we need really to recover a normal way of living as a country… So, we do not like to be something like a weight for humanity and the world,” he said.

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